Breaking

Monday, 18 August 2014

Markets open flat; Tata Motors up 1%.

Benchmark indices were trading with marginal gains in early deals as profit taking at higher levels capped further upsides. Meanwhile, crisis in Ukraine is likely to weigh on investor sentiment.

At 9:30AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 54 points at 26,157 and the 50-share Nifty was up 16 points at 7,808.

Narendra Modi, in his maiden Independence Day speech as Prime Minister (PM), announced to the world that he'd turn India into a manufacturing and export powerhouse, coupled with employment generation for the country's teeming youth. Narendra Modi also proposed an ambitious financial inclusion plan, Jan Dhan Yojana, to enable the poor to open bank accounts, with an insurance cover of Rs 1 lakh. This, he said, would especially help the families of farmers who ended their lives after failing to repay loans.

The foreign exchange market is closed on account of Parsi New Year holiday.

Asian stocks eked out gains on Monday after seeing Wall Street recover from the latest round of tensions in the Ukrainian crisis, although renewed uncertainty over the volatile conflict put a firm lid on markets.

The dollar was on the back foot against the safe-haven yen, weighed by a slide in Treasury yields.

News late on Friday that Ukrainian forces said they had destroyed a Russian military column in Ukrainian territory initially hit Wall Street, drove down government bond yields and boosted safe-haven currencies such as the yen and Swiss franc.

U.S. stocks eventually pared their losses as risk appetite partially returned, giving Asian shares an early lift on Monday.

BSE Capital Goods, Auto, Oil and Gas indices were among the top sectoral gainers while Realty, Metal and IT indices were among the top losers.

Tata Motors was up 1.7%. According to reports the company has seen slowdown in JLR sales. Tata Motors reported 8.4% decline in global sales to 80,151 units in July. The company had sold 87,566 units in the same month last year.

Beaten down capital goods staged a recovery on short covering at lower levels. L&T was up 0.7% and BHEL which was the top Sensex loser last week was up 1.7%.

Tata Power was up nearly 2% after the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Comission permitted the company to supply electricity to Mumbai city and parts of the suburbs for a period of 25 years.